Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to an information processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a recording medium.
Description of the Related Art
In an information processing apparatus, such as a multifunction peripheral, a nonvolatile storage medium such as a hard disk drive is mounted to store data about the apparatus. The life of a hard disk drive tends to be shorter the heavier an access load. (an access frequency, usage count) is. Accordingly, a technique for reducing an access load on a hard disk drive is proposed. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-258633 discusses a technique for reducing a load on a hard disk drive with a high failure occurrence rate by limiting access to the hard disk drive by using a cache memory.
In the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open. No. 2005-258633, during the data read step, data is read from a hard disk drive with a low failure occurrence rate among a plurality of hard disk drives. During the data write step, when a hard disk drive with a high failure occurrence rate is present, data is written into the cache memory, instead of writing data into the hard disk drive. The data stored in the cache memory is written into the hard disk drive before the data stored in the cache memory is cleared. According to the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-258633, in an apparatus including a plurality of hard disk drives, when failure occurrence rate of any one of the hard disk drives becomes high, the cache memory is used so as to prevent the use of the hard disk drive having a high failure occurrence rate.
However, the prior art fails to take into consideration the configuration for reducing degradation of a single hard disk drive to allow use of the hard disk drive for a longer period of time. In other words, the prior art fails to take into consideration the method for reducing degradation of a nonvolatile storage medium, such as a hard disk drive, before the failure occurrence rate in the nonvolatile storage medium increases.